In the years immediately before the war, Julian Wisner Hinkley was a schoolteacher in Waupun, WI in the winter, and a carpenter the rest of the year. He joined a local militia unit, the Waupun Light Guard, in April 1861 and they mustered for Federal service in May as Company D of the 3rd Wisconsin Infantry regiment. Promoted to 2nd Lieutenant in February 1862, he commanded his company in battle at Antietam on 17 September 1862.
Here’s Hinkley after he was promoted to Captain of Company E in April 1863:
He was wounded in Georgia in 1864 but survived the war, being acting Major of his regiment by the end.
See more about the soldiers named in his letter, over on Antietam on the Web:
- Pvt. John Wesley Gee
- Pvt. Charles H “Charley” Gee
- Capt. Andrew Clark
- Capt. George Walter Stevenson (Co. B)
- Lt. Orin S. Howard
- Pvt. Jonathan L Temple
- Pvt. Ferdinand Last
- Pvt. Edwin R Snyder
- Sgt. Robert L Oliver
- Corp. Clinton William Page
- Sgt. Charles Hammond Lindsley
- Pvt. Samuel Bechtel
- Pvt. Hiram Collins
- Corp. William Henry Cook
- Sgt. DeWitt Clinton Clark
- Pvt. William Elmore
- Pvt. William Henry Preston
- Pvt. John Spies
- Pvt. Samuel Smith
- Pvt. Silas Waters Ullom
- Pvt. Lorenzo Dow Wood
- Sgt. Joseph Wilkes
- Pvt. Adam Zeigler
Perhaps the saddest of these soldiers’ stories is that of Private Jonathan Temple, a 40 year old physician who left his wife and 2 small children to enlist in late August 1862. Traveling from Fond Du Lac County, WI, he finally joined his company near Sharpsburg, MD on 16 September – their newest recruit – and was killed in action the next day.
Or maybe it was the case of German-born Adam Zeigler. As he recovered from his Antietam wound in Philadelphia at Christmas 1862, he enlisted in the US Regular Army as a Private in the First United States Cavalry. He reenlisted in early 1864 and was promoted to Corporal, but was killed in August that year in a skirmish at Shepherdstown, WV, just 11 miles from the Antietam battlefield. He was about 20 years old.
The original addressee of the letter was Oscar F Gee (1836-1865). He had been a sergeant in Company D, but was discharged for disability in June 1862.
Notes
Big thanks to Dan Masters for the pointer to Lieutenant Hinkley’s letter. Dan has been publishing his research on the Civil War and military history in print and online for many years now, with a focus on Ohio troops.
I found the letter in a copy of the Waupun Times of 2 October 1862 online from BadgerLink, a service of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, Bureau of Libraries.
The text snippet which follows the letter is a reference to President Lincoln’s Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation issued on 22 September, 5 days after the Battle of Antietam and one day after Lieutenant Hinkley wrote to Oscar.
Hinkley’s c. 1863 photograph as Captain, Company E is from the collection of the Wisconsin Veterans Museum in Madison.
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